


Five Times Gryffindors Said I Love You With Blood

by cosmic_kid



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-21
Updated: 2015-07-21
Packaged: 2018-04-10 12:38:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,704
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4392104
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cosmic_kid/pseuds/cosmic_kid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Blood and rubies</p>
            </blockquote>





	Five Times Gryffindors Said I Love You With Blood

Five Times Gryffindors Said I Love You With Blood

I. They say to him You don’t ever think, Black, do you? You don’t ever fucking think about anything you do! And they say it with mouths twisted in rage and eyes burning with love and that hurts the most, how they can never shrug off the essential goodness shining bright and bold in their perfect hearts and he wants to hit them all so damn hard the light goes out for good but you steady your shaking hands and you look down and you spit out an apology and it happens again and again, those watchful angels, everything about them so fucking horribly good all you want is to hit them and to make sure they never ever leave you ever. So you concoct a plan because the problem is you do think, you think too much about everything all the time but you don’t listen to yourself because you are a Black and look at the fucking disasters every single one of your relatives have become so why would you be any different? Why would a single though that forces its way through your diseased brain be worth listening to? Except now you need that disease and you sneak out and steal some whiskey- as much as you can- and you get everyone so roaring drunk Pete passes out and Remus keeps asking if he’s dead, if he’s dead, if he’s dead, and James puts a flailing hand on his nose and Pete snorts and okay, he’s alive and this happens like fifty fucking times but you’re not drunk at all- that’s part of the plan- and you start pushing them, you become a real Black you become your mother with her shrill piercing voice, finding its way inside every tender scar and you can feel Remus and James’ rage growing, growing, but there’s still that light that awful beautiful light shining from their awful perfect beautiful eyes and finally James just needs you to shut up to shut the fucking hell up (ah, you really are a Black aren’t you, the plan’s working perfectly) and he hits you hard in the mouth, hard enough to split your lip open and blood runs down over your teeth, drips off your chin and then James is weeping, and Remus is holding you against his ugly fucking perfect sweater and you’re bleeding everywhere and James is saying I’m sorry Sirius, I’m so sorry, I’m so fucking sorry, and it’s fine, it’s fine, it’s fine your blood is on his hands and your blood is on Remus’ sweater and it’s so fucking right now you’re laughing through bloody teeth you’re smiling and laughing and if blood is all you can give them then that’s fine, that’s fine.

II. “You’re too good, Bill, come on. Stop being good for like an afternoon and come help me practice!” Charlie is two years younger than Bill but he’s built like a brick wall, no angles or eruption of bone, nothing gangly at all about him. He’s got these eyes as bright as autumn, warm light through dying leaves. Bill is the kind of handsome you sigh over, you whisper about, but Charlie is everything good in the world and it hurts Bill a little- although he doesn’t really know why- when Charlie calls him good. Because it’s not true. Bill isn’t good he’s perfect. There’s a difference. Bill is seventeen and head boy and Charlie is fifteen and Quidditch superstar and the kids respect Bill and love Charlie and that’s the best way to explain the difference between them. “Come on Bill, stop being Head Boy for a few hours, okay?” And finally Bill says okay because…because maybe he wants to be Charlie for a few hours, Charlie who isn’t afraid of anything, who goes into the forest with Hagrid and comes out full of scrapes and scratches and bruises and then there’s Bill, who hasn’t ever bled for anything in his life. So Bill and Charlie play Quidditch and Bill isn’t bad- never made the house team, but not awful really- and Bill watches Charlie fly- too big to be a seeker, they said when he started playing but Charlie proved them wrong, Charlie can do anything he wants he just barrels his way through the pain of the attempt and comes out grinning on the other side. And Bill tries to keep up, tries to stop being an artifice and just be good- not the good Charlie thinks he is but the real kind of good- and of course like a big idiot he falls and lands hard on his shoulder, skin split open, blood stained with grass. Charlie dives down- so much grace for such a barrel-chested kid-and he helps Bill up to his feet, cracking jokes in his even, concerned way and Bill sees his blood on Charlie’s fingers and Charlie says “well I guess we can’t all be perfect all the time, eh?” and Bill laughs through the pain of it, because he bleeds, see Charlie? He bleeds. He’s human. He bleeds.

III. When Ron Weasley breaks up with Lavender, Parvati is incensed. This is her sixth year here, her sixth year living in the shadows of a drama she never manufactured. They wonder why she and Lavender spend so much time with Professor Trelawney: it’s because for the first time since she started at Hogwarts, someone is interested in their fates, in the futures they can build out of stars and planets and tea leaves and crystal. Parvati finds it incredibly distasteful, how some individuals can suck the air out of a room and make it hard for everyone else to breathe; how lost people can become in their own heads that they forget others exist. And the worst part is, she knows there isn’t any real malice- not towards her, not towards Lavender or anyone else, really, but the negation is painful enough. And her parents keep threatening to pull her and Padma out, send them someplace safe as the world turns more and more to shadow and storm and honestly if not for Lavender and Professor Trelawney, Parvati would probably just go. Fuck those boys. Parvati hates to be crude. Fuck those awful boys and their awful tragedies and when they write the history of this war, no one will write about Parvati’s best friend weeping into her pillow because she dared to get in the way of destiny. No one will write about these ordinary heartbreaks. No one will care about two silly girls who weren’t marked by evil, who loved one another very much and loved the power the future held for them, when they could drag their fingers through tea leaves, when they could stare up at the stars and tell their own stories. Parvati doesn’t hate Harry Potter. She understands his fight. She supports it. She wants the killing to stop. She knows all of these things, but somehow Lavender matters more, her best friend’s tears matter so much more. One evening when Parvati brings Lavender a cup of tea, she finds Lavender attempting to sew a rip in her robe but her hands are shaking and she pricks her finger on the needle, a bulbous globe of blood pooling on her fingertip. Lavender starts crying again and Parvati puts down the tea, takes the needle and pricks her own finger, the pain negligible in the grand scheme of love and she shows Lavender her own pooling blood. Lavender gives her a teary smile. They press their fingertips together. No one will write the history of this moment but that doesn’t matter. Parvati will remember. 

IV. Children at war make all sorts of promises they can’t keep. Neville Longbottom makes promises every day. He stands up to monsters so people believe it can be done. He’s tasted his own blood so many times he dreams with the coppery flavor on his tongue. He’s forgotten what pain really means. But this children, all these brave wonderful broken children, Neville loves them more than he ever imagined he could- doesn’t matter their House or their surnames. Neville will be their promise. His blood will be their promise. 

V. Ginny does this alone for Fred, but as she kneels there she realizes it’s not just Fred, it’s for all the others, for Colin and Lavender, for Sirius and Remus and Tonks, for Mad-Eye and Dumbledore and for those that died without her ever meeting them, for James and Lily, for the nameless, for the ones she never knew, will never know, for all the stories her world will spend decades unraveling and for all the stories that will never be told. She stands in the Gryffindor common room after the battle is done- scrambling away from her family’s oppressive grief, from the weary adulation, from the strange finality of violence’s end and she sees a ruined place, a kingdom of rubble and sadness and she takes the rubies from the pocket of her robe- the rubies she stole from the shattered hourglass, the rubies that used to count their worth, their pride, the rubies that now stand for their blood and she scatters them on the broken ground. She notices a cut on her hand and there’s her own blood too, red as the rubies. Nothing makes much sense now. Ginny sees the world around her in a series of shuttering images, flicker-flashes of a reality she knows she will not be able to comprehend for a very long time and (her brother is dead her brother is dead so many are dead I have seen so many die so many are dead) there are just the rubies on the floor, glinting in the wan, pale light filtered in through cracked windows, the rubies and the blood on her hands and she smears her palm on the torn-up carpet and she stares at the rubies and this is Gryffindor bravery, isn’t it, this is that fabled courage, this desire to bleed for everyone you love, to bleed out over and over again for all the people you could not save, to bleed instead of weep, to bleed and remember.


End file.
